Overview
Conflict in Unity State broke out in late December 2013, only days after the current conflict began in Juba. Since then, the state has been one of the worst affected by the conflict, and currently hosts the highest reported numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country. Many areas in Unity are largely inaccessible to humanitarian actors due to insecurity and logistical constraints. As a result, only limited information is available on the humanitarian situation outside major displacement sites.
In order to fill such information gaps and facilitate humanitarian planning, in late 2015, REACH piloted its Area of Origin (AoO) methodology, which takes a territorybased approach that may cover several bomas, to collect data in hard-to-reach areas of Unity State. The pilot began in Bentiu PoC site in December 2015, and was expanded to Nyal in June 2016 in order to interview new arrivals as they were displaced from recent fighting.
In December 2016, REACH refined the methodology moving from the AoO to the Area of Knowledge (AoK) methodology, an approach collecting information at the settlement level. The most recent OCHA Common Operational Dataset (COD) released in February 2016 has been used as the reference for settlement names and locations.
Through AoK, REACH collects data from a network of Key Informants (KIs) who have sector-specific knowledge and gain the information from regularly traveling to and from the settlement, direct or indirect contact with people in the settlement, or recent displacement.
Data collected is aggregated to the settlement level and all percentiles presented in this factsheet, unless otherwise specified, represent percent of settlements within Unity with that specific response. The displacement section on page 2 refers to the proportion of assessed KIs arrived within the previous month (newly arrived IDPs).
Although current AoK coverage is still limited and its findings not statistically significant, it provides an indicative understanding of the needs and current humanitarian situation in assessed areas of Unity State.